Racial inequality still commonly exists in America

Letter

I’m writing in response to the column “Recognize infrequency of
racism,” which appeared on Oct. 31 in The Daily Targum. It was
disappointing to hear such a misguided opinion on race, especially
at the University, one of the most diverse schools in the
country.

The author maintains that “true racism” in the United States is not
nearly as commonplace as people think and holds that what passes as
racism is actually a form of classism. He starts by attempting to
debunk a supposed “classic example” of racism, namely that people
irrationally become frightened by the presence of a black or
Hispanic person while walking in a low-income neighborhood.
Although the author’s designation of the potentially frightened
person isn’t specific, one could assume that they are not black or
Hispanic.

The author suggests that fear caused while walking through a lower
socioeconomic neighborhood is instead the result of encountering a
“person … probably dressed like a thug in a neighborhood known for
thugs.” It’s unclear what these frightful “thugs” wear, but the
author succeeds in inadvertently expressing his prejudice toward
the way they dress. Instead of finding fault with class prejudice,
he apparently justifies it, maintaining that what passes as
contempt for “low-class black or Hispanic culture” is also held for
“low-class white culture” as well. What the author seems to be
telling us is that it’s not racism, but classism — we don’t like
poor whites either.

The author goes on to contrast stereotypes and inferences about
people’s race with what he identifies as “true” or “real racism,”
of which he offers Nazism and the Ku Klux Klan as examples. I’m not
sure of the author’s background, but I could guess that it has not
been extremely difficult, or else his opinion would be tempered
with his experience.

As a white male from a comfortable middle class environment, I’ve
spent my life becoming conscious of my privilege, through my
experience with female colleagues who earned less than me or
through seeing black coworkers unfairly passed over for promotion.
But one need not even go that far to see that racism is an integral
part of how we live. The continued segregation of our education
system largely denies blacks and Hispanics opportunities for class
mobility. Larger numbers of blacks, immigrants and other people of
color are under- or unemployed compared to their white
counterparts. Blacks and Hispanics are too often the victims of
deadly police violence. It would be silly to go on because the list
would be too long.

The only argument that could assert that this institutional racism
is not “real racism” would have to rely on some version of the
“Horatio Alger myth” of social mobility. The problem is that this
myth maintains that because we’re all born equal as human beings,
we have the same access to opportunities and the system treats us
equally as well. We already know that this is not the case, which
is why affirmative action programs, which grew out of an
anti-racist movement and which the author ironically derides as
“technically a form of racism,” are still so important.

Though I do agree with the author that progress has been made,
there is much work to be done. Perhaps the author would be
surprised to find out that the Klan and neo-Nazis, examples he
offers of “real racism,” are both still alive and well in the
United States. Often our privilege blinds us to the realities of
our sisters and brothers who have had to suffer real racism, sexism
and classism to make it to where they are today. It is important to
learn about their experiences so we do not deceive ourselves into
believing that everyone is already treated with equality.

Zach Campbell is a graduate student in the Department of Spanish
and Portuguese.